The Floor Is Lava
by Arctic Banana
Summary: The kids decide to play the weirdest game Optimus Prime has ever seen with their Autobot friends. Who will win and who will get burned alive by invisible floor lava?


_My little sister likes to play this game with me all the time. She's also been begging me to write her a story for months now. She loves Transformers Prime, so I decided to write this for her as a surprise when she comes home from camp tomorrow.  
_

* * *

Optimus glanced momentarily at the floor. There were three backpacks, a small yellow jacket, an iPod, some candy wrappers, and a hand held video game device scattered across the floor. The kids must be here. He wondered why they were here during school hours. "Oh right...they only had a half day today," he sighed. He hoped they didn't tear the place apart too badly. Ratchet liked to refer to school hours as his "Happy Time" and he wasn't too thrilled to learn about this "early dismissal" concept.

They seemed unusually quiet, which worried him. Last time they were this quiet he ended up having to repaint his room and purge a large family of armadillos from the air ducts. Optimus decided it was probably best that he find them before they got into too much trouble. He opened the door, stepped into one of the control rooms, and was surprised when he saw Bulkhead, Miko, Bumblebee, Raf, Arcee, and Jack all standing on a table.

His entrance didn't go unnoticed. "The floor is lava," Arcee said with a smile. Optimus noticed Ratchet watching them from a distance. He seemed just as confused as he was.

"Quickly! Onto that control panel before the table burns up!" Miko ordered.

"It's too far!" Raf pointed out.

"Maybe we can pick you kids up and throw you across?" Arcee teased.

"Do not stand on that control panel! I need that!" Ratchet scolded.

His words went unheard. Bulkhead looked around and realized there was no way they could jump across. In hindsight, starting on the most isolated table in the room was probably a bad idea. "Okay, I'm gonna sacrifice myself! All of you quickly jump across my body before it sinks like a Terminator!"

"Bulkhead, no!" Miko shouted. "You can't sacrifice yourself!"

Bulkhead leaned forward and landed with a thunderous clang onto the ground. Everything in the room that wasn't bolted to the floor bounced upwards a few inches or so. "Quickly, go! Save yourselves!" he shouted.

"I don't get it...what's happening?" Optimus asked Ratchet.

"I have no idea...Raf randomly shouted 'the floor is lava' and they all immediately jumped up on the table like a pack of cyber-monkeys," Ratchet explained. When he noticed them all walking across Bulkhead and standing on top of the control panel, he screamed out, "Hey! What did I just tell you?!" They stepped on a few buttons and soon the monitor was displaying some cat video from the Internet in a booming bass and the language settings were changed to Indonesian. "I'm gonna go lie down for a few minutes before I pop a gasket..." Ratchet mumbled. Optimus watched him turn around and leave the room.

"Miko, come across! Quickly!" Jack shouted to her. He held out his hand for her.

"Yeah Miko, go!" Bulkhead shouted.

"Bulkhead, you're not supposed to talk. You're dead!" Raf pointed out.

"Oh right. Sorry!" he said pleasantly.

"No!" Miko shook her head. "I can't see myself going on without Bulkhead! You'll all have to go on without me!"

"No, Miko! Don't do it! Bulkhead would want you to live!" Jack pointed out. They all screamed at her to stop but it was too late. She jumped off the table onto the floor. Their frantic pleading turned into synchronized "aww"-ing.

"Aw, why'd you do that for? You could have made it!" Bulkhead said disappointedly.

"Not without you, I couldn't," Miko replied. They both sat against the wall and watched the rest of the game take place, every once in a while cheering on whoever they decided to root for at the moment.

"Where now?" Arcee asked.

"To that safety railing I guess?" Jack suggested. He pointed above their heads towards the safety railing that walled off a slightly elevated platform.

Bumblebee beeped and shook his head. "Yeah, I agree," Raf nodded. "I don't think Bumblebee can balance on that."

"Well he'll have to try now, won't he? This control panel is on fire!" Arcee replied. She boosted Jack up to the safety railing and jumped up after him. Jack wobbled a bit, but Arcee had perfect balance.

"Okay, just you guys now! Hurry, you're running out of time!" Jack pointed out. He almost fell off onto the floor but Arcee quickly caught him.

"Careful..." Optimus warned. He didn't like the idea of the kids balancing on that railing. The platform wasn't too terribly high, but they could still get hurt if they fell off on the wrong side.

Bumblebee picked Raf up with ease and boosted him to the railing. Once he was sure he was safe, he attempted to climb up after him. "You okay?" Arcee laughed when she saw him nearly fall off. Bumblebee beeped angrily. "Sorry. I know, it looks hard for you," she apologized.

Bumblebee leaned over a little too far and fell over the railing onto the platform floor. "No!" Raf shouted. Bumblebee sighed and beeped a swear word that Optimus promptly scolded him for.

"He's out!" Arcee said. "Yes! I am the last Autobot standing!"

"There's still two more of us, Arcee!" Jack pointed out.

"Yeah, but you both don't have the skill and grace that I do!"

Bumblebee refused to join Miko and Bulkhead along the wall, preferring to stick close to Raf in case he fell off of something.

"Where to now?" Raf asked.

"Uh...how about that chair?" Arcee suggested. She pointed out a plastic, reinforced chair a few feet away.

"There's no way we can all fit on that," Jack replied.

"Well then let's see who makes it!" she challenged. "I already know I can jump onto it from here, so I'll let you two try it first."

"Quit bragging..."

Raf tried to jump onto the chair first, but he barely made it close enough to even touch it, even despite the fact that he was technically cheating and holding Bumblebee's hand to keep from falling off the railing when he stood on it. Bumblebee made a disappointed beep. "I know...I'm sad to be dead too," Raf sighed.

"You can join us in the afterlife. It's rather boring here," Bulkhead stated.

"Your turn," Arcee said smugly.

She held onto Jack's arm and steadied him when he stood up. His mom would unleash a hail of motherly fury on her if he fell off the railing and got hurt. She knew from experience that nothing was scarier than a human woman whose offspring was harmed or in danger, so she thought it best just to help him, even if it was cheating a bit.

"Okay...I can do this..." Jack said uneasily. Once steadied, he jumped and landed on the chair only to stumble backwards off of it. He would have fallen over if Bumblebee hadn't been near enough to catch him.

"Nice save!" Arcee stated. The relief in her tone was extremely evident that he hadn't fallen backwards off a chair onto the floor. That possibility hadn't even occurred to her when she'd ordered him to jump to it.

"I'm out..." Jack mumbled. He turned to Arcee. "Okay Miss Ninja, it's your turn. Let's see you make it."

"If you make this jump, you win the game!" Raf stated.

"$20 says she falls off and lands on her tailplate," Miko whispered to Bulkhead.

"You're on," he whispered back.

"I heard that!" Arcee shouted over her shoulder. She stood up, balanced herself a lot easier than the two children had, and lept from the railing to the chair with all the delicate grace of a rabid spider monkey dropping on a camper from a tree. She struck a triumphant pose. "Yes! I made it!"

"She made it," Jack stated. "Not surprised in the slightest."

Arcee's victory was cut short when the chair collapsed under her. She stared at the now flattened chair that she was standing on and deadpanned, "Ratchet's probably going to come in any minute now and claim he needed this chair." She got off it and nudged it with her foot. "What's it reinforced with, anyway?"

Raf approached her and examined it. "Steel," he replied.

"Arcee won and broke a chair!" Miko cheered. "Yay!"

"I still have no idea what just happened here..." Optimus sighed.


End file.
